28 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 23, 2013
Tables for Two
luksus
615 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn (718-389-6034)
What is currently New York's only beer-tasting menu is served in the back room
of a pub in the heart of Polish Greenpoint. Inevitably, it attracts beer fanatics
from all over, but there are just twenty-six seats---along with three cooks, and,
on any given night, five beers. The first is often It's Alive! Rhubarb, a sour
Belgian ale brewed for Luksus by the cult Copenhagen brewer Mikkeller. On
a recent evening, a craft-beer novice said that it tasted a little like grownup
Martinelli, but was careful to whisper, because the other twenty-five diners had
adopted a hushed reverence---the kind that comes with an extremely competitive
reservations process and a long pilgrimage involving the G train. In an era of
unprecedented restaurant din, "Have you read 'The Corrections'?" was the only
overheard remark of the three-hour meal.
Unusually, there is no sense of slog in the tasting menu, no wave of terror
with the petits fours that the night will never end and that you'll still be hungry
when it finally does. Perhaps that's because the food is unexpected and elegant.
It comes from Daniel Burns, formerly of Momofuku's R. & D. test kitchen and
the renowned Copenhagen restaurant Noma. When you sit down, the waitstaff
bring the fanciest bar snacks you're likely to find. There's a marinated chicken
oyster, wrapped in a little leaf of braised cabbage smeared with eggplant purée,
and fried cipollini onions, for dipping in a sweet buttermilk dressing: an elevated
take on tacos and French onion dip. What could be better drinking food?
The next course, a beef tartare, is heartier, to accompany a dark ale with a
farmhouse funk from the Belgian brewery Hof ten Dormaal. There's a chip
of dehydrated caramelized onion and roasted chicken stock on the side, rich
in explosive umami flavor. Little Gem, the surprise "it" lettuce of the summer,
comes roasted, in a beautiful but impractical bowl from the Danish potter that
supplies Noma. It is too deep to allow effective cutting---or to mix in the egg
that comes on top.
Like the room, all blond Scandinavian timber, Burns's cooking has a
sparseness; this is earthy food that functions as the straight man to adventurous,
even weird beers. There's a dessert you'll wish Häagen-Dazs would put in a
tub: a blueberry-and-wintergreen sorbet, swirled with corn ice cream, rife with
chunks of blueberry cookie dough. It's served with a Berliner Weisse called
Justin Blåbær, which has been aged in brunello barrels. Blueberry cookie dough
and glass-bottle soda to match: this is what you imagined adulthood would be.
---Amelia Lester
Open for dinner Tuesdays through Fridays. Tasting menu $75, beer pairing $45.
BAR TAB center bar
10 Columbus Circle, Time Warner
Center, 4th floor (212-823-9482)
At 8:46 on the morning of 9/11, when
the first plane hit the World Trade
Center, Michael Lomonaco, the
executive chef of Windows on the
World, was in the building's below-
ground concourse, where he had
stopped to get his glasses fixed.
Seventy-nine of the restaurant's
employees were already at work;
they were all lost. Lomonaco has
since helped raise $22 million for
their families. Last year, adjacent to
his steak emporium Porter House,
Lomonaco opened Center Bar---with
chrome finishes to resemble a yacht,
and a spectacular view down Fifty-
ninth Street. "The great cocktail,
the small plate of food---Joe Baum
did this at Windows with the Hors
d'Oeuvrerie," Lomonaco said. "There
is a tribute aspect to Center Bar."
The menu has a post-Rainbow Room
retro eye and a modern sensibility:
there are six champagne cocktails,
and a soulful King's Old-Fashioned
is rounded out with a wet walnut.
Sophisticated small plates include
charred Kobe beef and prosciutto
arancini. Some evenings, there's a
piano man on the Baldwin baby
grand. According to Lomonaco,
"You might hear some American
Songbook, some jazz. You might hear
a little bit of Billy Joel in there, but
it's O.K. It's interpretively done."
---Shauna Lyon
F D &
DRI K
Photograph by Eric Helgas; Illustration by MATTHEW HOLLISTER